Dictionary of Literary Biography on David (William) Rabe

David Rabe is often referred to as a Vietnam playwright, largely because his reputation was established on the basis of work he wrote in the years immediately following his tour of duty in Vietnam. While the war certainly provided a catalyst for his writing and has shaped much of his subject matter, the Vietnam War and even war in general is not his only concern, even in the works that critics have termed the Vietnam Trilogy ( The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel, performed in 1971; Sticks and Bones, 1969; and Streamers, 1976) or that Rabe gathered in 1993 as The Vietnam Plays (adding The Orphan, 1973, to the previous three). The cultural images and expectations thrown upon individuals from their family, their religion, their country, and the media--images that corrupt, shape, limit, define, and elude them--seem to be his deepest concern. His characters tend to be confused about how to define themselves...